


Kyoudai

by cultivationtrash (writing_in_the_dark)



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Gintoki has zero communication skills, Hijikata's could use some work too, Incest, M/M, No Sex, One Shot, Otose is the only one who can communicate like an adult, T for language and subject, by no means intended to be canon, i think the ending is happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24315583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_in_the_dark/pseuds/cultivationtrash
Summary: Gintoki has kept a secret from Hijikata the entire time they’ve known each other. When the secret comes out, their values clash hard, threatening to destroy what they have together.
Relationships: Hijikata Toshirou/Sakata Gintoki
Comments: 11
Kudos: 48





	Kyoudai

**Author's Note:**

> Just making sure everyone saw the *****Incest***** tag.
> 
> Cross-posted from tumblr, ostensibly for GinHiji Week 2020 - Day 7.

Gintoki looked surprised, but it was less of an _‘Oh my goodness; that can’t possibly be true’_ surprised and more of an _‘Oh shit; you found out’_ surprised.

“You knew,” Hijikata said. There was scarcely a hint of a question mark at the end; it was an accusation. When Gintoki only responded by casting his guilt-filled eyes toward the carpet, he demanded, “How long have you known?”

Gintoki still didn’t speak, so Hijikata punched him in the face. He wanted to beat the hell out of him, but he already felt guilty about losing his temper, so he took a couple steps back and tried to calm down.

Tense silence filled the next hundred seconds. Hijikata broke it with another question. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

Hijikata was frustrated to death with the continued silence. Though he knew Gintoki could hear him just fine, he raised his voice to ask, “Were you planning to let me go to my grave not knowing?”

Gintoki finally made eye contact and simply answered, “Yes.”

To avoid beating Gintoki within an inch of his life, Hijikata turned to walk away.

Gintoki grabbed his arm, begging quietly, “Please don’t go.”

Furious, Hijikata shook Gintoki’s hand off and shoved him away. He spat, “Don’t fucking touch me.”

He stormed out of the room seeing red. Too angry to be near other human beings, he bought a bottle of whisky, walked to the Terminal, used his Shinsengumi credentials to gain access to a seldom-used security room with a view of the city, and drank himself into oblivion.

\------------------------

“You look like shit,” Otose commented, gesturing, lit cigarette in hand, toward her lone customer.

Gintoki’s only response was to watch his own finger slowly trace a scratch in the bar top.

Otose knew him well enough to tell he was far more upset than he appeared. Coming closer, she asked with her own brand of concern, “What happened?”

Gintoki’s shaky sigh of a response was all the answer Otose needed, but her suspicion was confirmed when he answered, “The worst.”

“Did you tell him, or did he find out on his own?”

Cradling his head in one hand and holding the other up in a gesture meant to stop Otose from rubbing salt in the wound, he said, “Don’t say, ‘I told you so.’”

Shaking her head, Otose said, “I wasn’t going to say that, but you did know it was probably only a matter of time.”

Gintoki knotted his eyebrows and responded with a quiet, resigned, “I know.”

“It would have been better if he’d heard it directly from you…”

Losing his temper, Gintoki pounded both fists on the bar and interrupted in a raised voice, “I know!”

Providing comfort in the only way she thought he’d let her, Otose poured a shot of whisky and set it in front of him.

He slammed it down in a single gulp and held the glass out, silently asking for more.

Otose didn’t indulge him right away. She didn’t want him to hide from his fuck-up at the bottom of a bottle. Encouraging him to face the situation, she assured kindly, “This might sound trite, but I have a feeling everything is going to be ok.”

He scoffed and looked at her with a pained frown. “You’re right. That sounds really fucking trite.”

She knew not to press the issue further. The best she could do for him now was refill the glass, and so she did, with a double shot.

He took his time drinking it. As he ducked under the noren on his way out, he turned back and gave a single nod that she took as his way of saying, _‘Thank you.’_

\------------------------

Hijikata was no longer able to pretend there was any chance this was all just a mistake or misunderstanding. He had so many questions, and Gintoki was the only person who might have answers. They had been avoiding each other for weeks, but it was time for a conversation. Afraid Gintoki would continue to avoid him if he knew he was coming, Hijikata showed up at the Yorozuya unannounced.

His knock on the door was answered by Kagura, who let him in, yelling into the apartment, “Gin-chan! Mayora’s here to see you!”

It was obvious no productive conversation would be had with her around, so Hijikata pulled some cash out of his wallet. Handing it to her, he said, “Take your dog for a walk. I don’t want to see your faces again until after sundown.”

Grinning, she took the cash and called for Sadaharu.

The giant dog bound over excitedly and closed his mouth around Hijikata’s head. Hijikata tried to push the beast off, to no avail. Only when Kagura scolded him did the dog relinquish his jaw’s vice grip.

The girl and her dog left, and Hijikata stood in the entryway, cringing at the nasty sensation of having his head coated in smelly dog saliva.

Gintoki got a fresh bath towel out and handed it to him, giving an apologetic, “He does that to me at least three times a week. At least his teeth didn’t puncture your skin.”

Hijikata took the towel with a muttered, “Thanks.”

He went into the bathroom and washed his hair, face, and neck, pondering how he was going to start the conversation. As he toweled off, he decided starting at the beginning chronologically might work best.

He hung the damp towel on a rack and went out to the living room, where Gintoki was waiting for him on a couch. He sat on the opposite couch. Getting straight to the point, he asked, “Who’s older?”

“You, by about ten minutes.”

The thought of their being fraternal twins hadn’t crossed Hijikata’s mind. He had assumed Gintoki was either older or a few years younger. If Gintoki was too much younger, Hijikata would have remembered his mother being pregnant. He pointed out, “But…we have different birthdays…”

Stating what seemed obvious to him, Gintoki said, “Mine is made up.”

This still wasn’t tracking for Hijikata. He couldn’t picture what would have made his mother give birth to twins but only raise one of them and never so much as mention the other. His mother didn’t always make great decisions, as evidenced by her affair with a married man, but she was not a bad person. She wouldn’t have abandoned her own son. Confused, he asked, “Why didn’t my mother raise you?”

Gintoki pointed a finger toward his own face and raised one eyebrow. “You see what I look like, right? Your father thought I was a demon. I’m only alive because your mother left me on the beach instead of drowning me in the sea, like your father told her to. Your father was a complete asshole, by the way.”

Hijikata sighed, overwhelmed by what he was hearing. After a minute’s thought, he asked, “How do you know all this?”

“Your mother apparently tracked me down when I was little. I guess it wasn’t hard to find a little boy with silver hair. Anyway, it seems she kept tabs on me from there, at least enough to know I’d been given the name Sakata Gintoki. She wrote me a letter that was delivered to me by a courier when she passed away, telling me about my birth and about her son Toushirou.”

“Do you still have the letter?”

“No. It was burned by the Amanto, along with a camp full of my comrades.”

“How did you figure out I was the Toushirou from the letter? Did it mention my family name?”

“The letter didn’t say your family name, but it did say your date of birth, May 5. Also, I could tell it was you as soon as I met you.”

“Huh? How could you tell it was me?”

“We look alike.”

“No, we don’t!”

“Yes, we do. Even Kagura noticed. Remember when she pointed it out during the Host Club arc?”

Hijikata hated to admit it, but outside of their hair, eye, and skin colors (and their hair’s behavior), there were similarities in their looks. Even more than that, they thought and acted alike, often enough that it scared him. He sometimes thought they were two sides of the same coin. Knowing they were brothers made sense of everything except for Gintoki’s behavior. “You’ve known who I was since we met, but you made a move on me anyway? Why?”

Gintoki cast his eyes down toward the coffee table. Despite the amount of time he had to think about it, he still wasn’t ready to answer this question.

There was something Gintoki didn’t seem to be comprehending, and Hijikata didn’t know how to explain it to him, other than to state the obvious. “We’re brothers. Do you get that? You knowingly had sex with your brother.”

Slipping into his bad habit of acting like a prick when he was anxious, Gintoki smirked and said, “I know, and I would do it again and again, if he would let me.”

The brazenness pissed Hijikata off. Standing abruptly, he said, “Not fucking happening.”

He walked out, slamming the sliding door shut on his way, though he wasn’t feeling angry; he was hurt. Gintoki knew full well who he was this whole time, but he still flirted his way into his bed… into his _heart._ He had fallen for Gintoki, but it felt like their two-or-three-times-weekly love hotel hook-ups were nothing more than casual fucking for Gintoki.

Hijikata was heartbroken. In the ensuing days and weeks, he buried himself in his work to keep his mind off his former lover.

\------------------------

In public, Gintoki and Hijikata bickered and acted annoyed to see each other, like they always had, just to keep onlookers from figuring out anything had changed between them. Privately, they didn’t interact at all.

After a few weeks, Hijikata’s conscience started bothering him. Gintoki was his only living blood relative, and they were effectively treating each other like strangers. He felt the need to try to repair their relationship.

The next time they crossed paths, Gintoki was alone, so Hijikata asked him to take a walk with him. It was unpleasantly cold and windy out. The lack of other people outside allowed Hijikata to openly speak his mind as they walked along the river. “I wanted to talk to you, because I don’t like that we’re acting like we don’t even know each other. We’re family. We should at least treat each other like we’re friends.”

Gintoki stopped walking, and Hijikata stopped as well, turning around to look at him. With a scowl, Gintoki said, “I don’t want to be ‘friends’ with you, and we are _not_ ‘family.’”

The words hit Hijikata like a gut-punch.

“We share genetic material, but you are not, never have been, and never will be my ‘brother,’ and I am not yours.”

Gintoki walked away, and Hijikata stood there in shock. He had never been so hurt in his entire life.

\------------------------

Otose had always known Gintoki to be bad at dealing with his emotions, but in the months since Hijikata found out about their shared parentage, he had gotten even worse. He was drinking more and often came home late after having meaningless sex with random strangers. His coping mechanisms worried her.

Otose gave him time to heal and move on, but one night, she lost all patience. That night, Kagura came into the bar, asking if she could spend the night in one of the booths. She had gone over to Otae’s to spend the night, but Otae wound up getting called into work last-minute, to cover for a friend who was ill. When Kagura tried to go home, Gintoki was there with three other gentlemen. Kagura had the good sense to leave before any of the four men saw her and before she saw anything too lewd, thankfully.

Otose was extremely tempted to march up the stairs and kick Gintoki’s three fuck buddies out, but she knew he was likely drunk or worse, and she didn’t want Kagura seeing him that way. Otose made sure Kagura had a safe place to sleep for the night, and the next day, she bitched Gintoki out for irresponsibly bringing men home like that.

Talking to Gintoki about the reason for his behavior of late would have been pointless at best, Otose knew. When the opportunity arose, she went around him to address the issue. She saw Yamazaki walking down the street one day and stopped him, telling him to let the vice chief know she wanted to speak with him.

Hijikata showed up at Otose’s bar mid-morning of the following day, feeling uneasy. He assumed Gintoki was going to be the topic of discussion, but he hoped otherwise.

The bar wasn’t open yet, but Otose let him in and offered him a drink, which he declined. He sat at the bar, and she stood behind it.

She started the conversation out with, “You know he’s never honest, right?”

He laughed under his breath and said, “He’s a little _too_ honest sometimes.”

She lit a cigarette and said, “No. I don’t think he’s ever been honest with you.” She held out a fresh cigarette and offered, “Want one?”

“Yes, please.”

She handed him the cigarette and lit it for him, then she continued, “If he was honest, he wouldn’t have kept such a big secret from you.”

Hijikata expelled the smoke from his first drag much more rapidly than he meant to, caught off-guard by the revelation that Otose seemed to know everything. He asked, “How… How do you know about that?”

“Unlike everyone else, I didn’t write off how similar you two are to a mangaka’s lack of imagination and art skills. When I asked him if you were his long-lost twin, he denied it, but it was an obvious lie.” She took a drag off her cigarette and asked, “How did _you_ find out?”

Since she already knew his secret, Hijikata decided there was no harm in telling her the story.

It had been a routine day, outside of it being the first day the Shinsengumi was testing out their new portable fingerprint/DNA scanners in the field. The scanners connected to a centralized database of biometrics for known criminals, along with those of members of the Shinsengumi, Mimawarigumi, and prefectural police.

Hijikata saw the scanners from afar during the morning’s briefing, but he wanted a closer look. After everyone was in bed, he finished up the day’s paperwork and went to the armory. He picked up one of the scanners, examined it for a minute, and then he decided to test the device on himself. He pressed the pad of his own right thumb to the fingerprint scanner. After a few seconds, the screen lit up with a match and his information: headshot, name, date of birth, Shinsengumi affiliation, etc. He was pleased with how well the machine worked.

As he set the machine down, he felt a prick on his finger. He had accidentally triggered the scanner to take a small blood sample. As expected, the screen displayed a DNA match to himself. However, it also indicated that there was one more partial match. He tapped the touchscreen to view the other match and was shocked to see a mugshot of the person he was sleeping with, along with his name, date of birth, a truncated list of his suspected crimes, and the words, _‘98% probability full sibling.’_ Wanting to make sure no one else would see what he just saw, he hurriedly completed the procedure for clearing the scanner’s test history and set it back on the shelf where it belonged.

At the time, he was in denial; he thought it must be a mistake. However, the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed the machine made an error. Nobody else was encountering false readings when using the machines in the field.

A few days after the incident with the scanner, he told Gintoki about it, thinking he didn’t know. When he found out he knew all along, he ended up punching him in the face. A few days after that, he asked Gintoki if he would be willing to give a sample to send off to a laboratory for a DNA test. He agreed, and Hijikata sent their samples to the lab. A couple weeks later, the results came back. They were definitely full-blooded siblings. He could no longer live in denial.

Otose listened to Hijikata’s story. By the end of it, he looked like he wanted to cry. She offered, “Are you sure you don’t want a drink? It’s on the house.”

He gave an almost imperceptible nod that she took as assent. She poured him a finger of whisky and asked, “Did he tell you the truth?”

He took a sip and answered, “Yeah. He told me my – _our_ – mother had written a letter, telling him why she abandoned him and that he had a brother. A courier delivered the letter to him after she died.”

“No. That’s not what I mean. Did he tell you the truth about how he feels about you?”

He gave a bitter laugh and said, “He did. He told me he doesn’t think of me as a friend or as family and that all he wants from me is sex.”

She frowned and tilted her head. “Is that what he said? ‘All I want from you is sex’?”

“Not in so many words.”

She sighed heavily and muttered to herself, “That boy, I swear.” Addressing Hijikata, she said, “Wait here, please. I’ll be right back.”

She walked out the back door. Hijikata sat right where he was, unsure of what was going on.

A couple minutes later, she came back, with the lazy samurai who lives upstairs in-tow. Hijikata nearly choked on his whisky.

When Gintoki saw Hijikata, he tried to duck out the back door, but Otose caught him by the ear and dragged him behind the bar with her, forcing him to stand in front of Hijikata.

“ _Ow! Ow!!_ Let go of my ear, hag!”

Not letting go of Gintoki’s ear, Otose told Hijikata, “Go ahead and ask him anything you want. I’ll make sure he answers honestly.”

Hijikata sat his whisky glass down, trying to think what he should ask. He went back to a question Gintoki dodged when he asked previously. “Why did you make a move on me, even though you know we’re brothers?”

Gintoki gave a pervy grin and said, “You have a nice body—” Otose pulled hard on the ear she still had between her fingers. “ _Owww!!!_ Dammit, woman!”

“Answer the man truthfully, dumbass, and I’ll let go of your ear!”

Gintoki made a pouty frown at her, then he looked at a stack of cocktail napkins sitting on the bar and reluctantly answered the question quietly, “Because… I like you.”

He waited for Otose to let go of his ear, but she didn’t. Casting a sideways glare at her, he yelled, “Let go of my ear already! You promised!”

“Tell the _whole_ truth, and I will. He doesn’t need any more of your half-baked, half-assed half-truths. You’ve spoon-fed him enough of those, I think.”

“ _Ugh_ , god, fine!!” he whined at her before answering his question for the third time, “I love you! I’m in love with you!”

Otose relinquished his ear, which he then rubbed while mutter-whining, “Fuck. That hurts, bitch.”

She got in his face and asked threateningly, “Who’s a bitch?”

He held up his hands innocently. “No one! Nobody! I misspoke!”

“Damn straight you did,” she mumbled, lighting herself another cigarette.

Gintoki asked Otose, “Can I go now?”

She looked at Hijikata, who had been sitting there all the while in shock, with his mouth hung open, and said, “Not until you get him to start breathing again.”

Gintoki stepped up to the bar in front of Hijikata’s seat, leaned over, resting his elbows on the bar top, and poked Hijikata in the forehead, teasing him, “Oogushi-kun, you have to breathe, or else you’ll never be able to smoke again.”

That snapped Hijikata out of the shock he was in from the confession. He took a deep breath in and realized how much the man whose finger was still outstretched toward his forehead pissed him the fuck off. Since the irritating idiot was so close, Hijikata grabbed him by the collar and got in his face, yelling with increasing volume, “You’re in love with me?! Since fucking when? Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell me that? Dumbfuck! Idiot! Moron! Goddamn, you piss me off!!” He let go of Gintoki’s collar and sat back on the barstool. Still breathing heavily, he added in quiet frustration, “You’re so fucking stupid.”

“ _Tch_. I’m not stupid,” Gintoki retorted, crossing his arms, “and I basically did tell you! Don’t you remember me saying, ‘I don’t want to be friends or brothers with you’? What the fuck did you think I meant by that?! I didn’t tell you while we were sleeping together because there was no point! You don’t feel the same. What we did meant nothing to you. Look how easily you walked away from me once you found out we share DNA!”

Hijikata stood up and walked around the bar while responding, “Are you fucking kidding?! You're incredibly stupid! That is _not_ why I ended things between us!” Standing in front of Gintoki, he argued passionately, “Goddammit, you stupid shithead! Let me spell it out for you. Whether you or I like it or not: We. Are. _Brothers!_ We can’t have a romantic relationship!!”

Gintoki nearly broke down in tears to hear Hijikata reject him in no uncertain terms. However, he hid it behind a calm face for as long as he could. “Only a DNA test thinks of us as brothers. We weren’t raised together. Not counting the day we were born, we didn’t meet until we were in our twenties. You didn’t even know your ‘brother’ existed until a few months ago.” As he spoke of what happened right after he was born, he quickly lost control of his emotions. His volume grew as he pointed out, “I only knew your father long enough for him to demand my murder, and I only knew your mother long enough for her to abandon me in a basket on the beach! Thank god it was May and not wintertime, or else I might have died of exposure!!!”

Hijikata opened his mouth to speak but decided to close it when he figured out he wasn’t sure how he felt, much less what he should say. He thought about it for a minute, then said regretfully, “It’s enough that a DNA test thinks we’re brothers.”

Gintoki made a scoffing noise to hide a pained sob. Walking out of the bar the back way, he said, “ _Hmm_. That’s too bad. I guess we’re done talking.”

Hijikata slowly ran his hands down his face.

Otose got out another fresh cigarette and held it out to Hijikata. He took it, and she lit it for him. “He’s an idiot. Be patient with him. Give him time to calm down and think. Give yourself time to think, for that matter.”

Hijikata took a drag and frowned. “Why? Do you agree with him? Do you think I should ignore our blood relationship?”

Otose held both hands up, indicating she wasn’t taking sides. “I’m not saying I agree or disagree with either of you, and I wouldn’t dare tell you what to do. You have a good head on your shoulders, and I trust you’ll use it. I will say this: If you’re unhappy, there’s a chance you’ve made the wrong choice.”

“Yeah.” He was too exhausted to disagree. He walked to the door and said, “Thanks for the drink…and smokes…and everything else…”

She nodded and said, “Don’t worry too much. I have a feeling everything will turn out fine.”

He really doubted that, but he wasn’t going to waste the energy saying so. He simply nodded and walked out.

\------------------------

Hijikata took Otose’s words to heart. He thought and thought and thought.

Ultimately, he couldn’t get past his and Gintoki’s being brothers. It was an incontrovertible fact that they were family, whether Gintoki wanted to think of them that way or not, and in his mind, family was 100% off-limits when it came to prospective romantic partners.

He knew it wasn’t an answer Gintoki would like. Hell, he didn’t care much for the answer himself. Still, it settled the issue. He did his best to move on with his life.

\------------------------

Half a year passed with Gintoki and Hijikata barely being on speaking terms. They were no longer doing a good job of faking their usual belligerent friendship in front of others, and people had started noticing. More than once, Gintoki had to assure Kagura and Shinpachi that he wasn’t in a fight with Hijikata and that the mood was just the result of a cranky mayonnaise and tobacco addict going through mayonnaise and/or tobacco withdrawals.

\------------------------

The half a year that passed was a lonely and miserable half a year for Hijikata. He recalled Otose’s words, when she said that if he was unhappy, he might have made the wrong choice. He was definitely unhappy.

He missed Gintoki. To his consternation, he noted that he missed Gintoki as a lover and as a friend, not as a brother. He was convinced they were family, so he didn’t understand why he was being such a damn hypocrite and not thinking of them as such. He could only conclude that he must have missed something. He went back to the drawing board and started thinking again from scratch.

He thought about the concept of family and what it meant to him. He didn’t have a lot of experience in the department. He only ever had two relatives he truly considered family, his mother and his half-brother Tamegorou, and both of them had been gone for a long time. His father never acknowledged his existence. His other half-siblings and the rest of his father’s family treated him like shit because he was the mistress’ kid. He never really thought of them as family; they were people who just happened to be related to him.

In that moment, Hijikata realized _family_ and _relatives_ aren’t the same thing. Aside from a spouse you choose to marry or a child you choose to raise, _relatives_ tend to be people who are thrust upon you, whether you want them or not. _Family_ are people you choose to call your own, and they may or may not be related to you by blood, marriage, or adoption. You may choose not to think of a relative as family, as he did with most of his father’s relatives, or you may choose to think of someone who isn’t related to you as family, as he did with Kondo.

If you have relatives you’ve chosen not to consider as family for one reason or another, they’re probably also no one you’d consider as a candidate for romantic partner, but what exactly is it that puts the relatives you _do_ consider family out of the running for romantic partner? The obvious answer is shared DNA, but in reality, there’s a lot more to it than that. The real reason you don’t think of your parents, children, or siblings in a romantic light is that they have a role in your life that precludes the possibility of romance. The type of love you should have for them is incompatible with the type of love you should have for a romantic partner. That’s why most people would see a non-blood-related adopted sibling as being off-limits for romance; there’s no shared DNA, but they’re still a sibling.

His thought process was very enlightening, but it didn’t necessarily help him make decisions about the issue at hand. There were still arguments favoring Gintoki’s point of view and arguments favoring his, and he was finding it impossible to reconcile the two.

Gintoki would argue that their shared DNA was no issue. There was no chance an intimate relationship between them would result in children. Gintoki made it clear he had no interest in being brothers, and if Hijikata was honest, he didn’t think of them as brothers, either; so, the incompatibility between brotherly love and romantic love didn’t apply. Neither of them was grossed-out by the idea of being together. Neither of them had a religious objection to it.

Hijikata would counter-argue that it wasn’t that simple. He had a number of valid concerns that couldn’t easily be dismissed. If their blood relation was found out, it would surely end Hijikata’s career, though he was aware that was a risk he ran just by having a homosexual relationship. Of greater concern, it would likely ruin many of both Hijikata’s and Gintoki’s friendships if it was found out. Most people wouldn’t look favorably upon them if they chose to pursue a romance despite their knowing they were brothers.

There was no choice he could make that didn’t carry huge risk. He could participate in an incestuous relationship that would at best be frowned upon by nearly anyone who found out about it, or he could spend the rest of his life regretting letting Gintoki’s DNA-only identity as his brother get in the way of his being with the man he loves. How the hell was he supposed to weigh those risks against each other?

It was so overwhelming to think about. He wished he never found out they were related, or maybe he wished he never found out Gintoki was in love with him. Unfortunately, he needed to make a decision: Was he going to pursue a romance with Gintoki or not? He wasn’t going to rest well until the question was given a final answer. Until then, it seemed he was going to continue spending every waking moment thinking.

\------------------------

Another week of thinking raised more questions only Gintoki could answer. They arranged to meet at Gintoki’s apartment one evening while Kagura and Sadaharu were elsewhere.

They sat on opposite couches, neither speaking a word. Hijikata’s anxiety grew as he worked up the courage to speak. He could feel Gintoki’s eyes prying into him. Gintoki was just as anxious as Hijikata, if not more so, as he had no idea what Hijikata was there to say.

The uncomfortable silence ended when Hijikata said, “I have some questions.”

Antsy and wishing Hijikata would get to the damn point already, Gintoki said, “Yes, you mentioned that yesterday.”

Hijikata decided to start with the easy question. “Who knows we’re related?”

“Just you, me, and the old lady.”

It was a relief to confirm that the secret hadn’t spread. Then, with heavy emphasis on the ‘if,’ Hijikata proposed a hypothetical situation. “ _If_ we were to date… What if people found out we’re related?”

“I wouldn’t let people find out,” Gintoki stated confidently.

“How would you stop them? I found out by accident. What if someone ran your or my DNA, the way I did? They’d find out.”

“I’ll get someone to hack the database and make it so we don’t show up as a DNA match anymore.”

Stunned by Gintoki’s uncharacteristic pragmatism, Hijikata didn’t say anything else right away. He wouldn’t admit it, but Gintoki’s plan might work. After a minute, he moved on to the next question, again emphasizing the ‘if.’ “ _If_ we were to date… What would happen if we broke up? Would we go back to how things have been for the past six months, with us practically being strangers?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether we break up because you’ve decided you want us to be ‘brothers.’”

“That won’t happen. I had a brother. You’re nothing like him.”

“In that case, if we broke up, we would be friends.”

“But… _If_ we broke up… What if, down the road, something bad happens and one of us has no one else to rely on? Wouldn’t it be better if we thought of each other as family? We could be there for each other.”

“I have no problem with us thinking of each other as family. I just won’t do it because of a DNA test. I would think of us as family because…” Gintoki suddenly got shy, “…because I love you. Actually…” he admitted, “…I sort of already think of you as family.”

Seriously, if Gintoki had just said all these things out loud sooner, Hijikata would have been in a much better position to make informed decisions over the past several months. Then again, he didn’t exactly do the best job of saying things out loud, either. He said little enough that Gintoki thought their relationship meant nothing to him, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized he never did manage to say the words out loud. He thought he better say it now, or else he would leave this conversation being an even worse communicator than Gintoki. “I love you too.”

Gintoki’s entire demeanor lifted. He asked cautiously, “You do?”

“Yes, but we can't go back to the relationship we used to have,” Hijikata answered, feeling guilty at the way Gintoki’s demeanor dropped again. “We need to start over. We need a solid foundation of friendship and honesty. I need us to promise we’ll be there for each other, no matter what happens.”

Crestfallen, Gintoki agreed, “Ok. I promise.”

“And we need to take it slower this time,” Hijikata added, walking across the room to the other couch.

Gintoki looked up at him, not following what he was saying.

Hijikata sat next to him and took his hand.

Gintoki still didn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t want to get his own hopes up, but it seemed like Hijikata was treating him like more than a friend. The simple gesture of holding hands had him all fucked up. Afraid of being rejected again, he asked hesitantly, “Can… Can I kiss you?”

Hijikata looked down at his lap shyly, nodded, and mumbled, “No tongue.”

Gintoki’s smile returned. He leaned in and kissed Hijikata on the lips. The kiss was gentle and chaste, but it somehow carried far more passion and emotion than any of their countless previous kisses. Overwhelmed by his feelings, Gintoki pulled Hijikata in for a hug. Their arms wrapped around each other lovingly. It was as if they were touching each other for the first time. He spoke into his hair, repeating, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Hijikata repeated back.

The hug ended suddenly when Gintoki had a thought. He facepalmed and lamented, “Fuck. I’m going to have to tell the old bag she was right about everything turning out ok.”

“Ah! Otose-san said that to you, too?”

“Yeah! Oh god, she’s going to gloat about this forever.”

“Let her gloat,” Hijikata said, “It’s a good thing she was right.”

Cheering up, Gintoki kissed Hijikata on the cheek, then he smiled and agreed, “Yeah. I’m glad she was right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this odd little “what-if” story of mine. The idea came to me almost a year-and-a-half ago, while I was writing _Gin;Tama – The Semicolon Arc._ I wrote Hijikata asking to borrow one of Gin-san’s kimonos to wear as they went out for drinks, and I had Gin-san tell him, “There’s one with a different pattern in there, if you want to avoid looking like you’re having drinks with your fraternal twin.” In that moment, I thought, “Oh, fuck. I’m going to end up writing an incest fic for a fandom that doesn’t want it.” And here we are.


End file.
